Something about the Star Trek Timeline which always bothered me...
In short, given their head start in tech and Imperialist Ambitions the Romulan Star Empire should have emerged and established themselves as the dominant force in the Alpha Quadrant long before their rivals developed the Steam Engine, let alone Warp Travel.
Would you agree and if not, why?
Zor
Your logic is flawed.
You seem to assume that the history of the Romulans in Diane Duane novels is canonical. But it isn't canonical, and thus there is no guarantee that it is true in Star Trek. And some evidence that it is not.
In "Balance of Terror" no one has ever seen a Romulan or knows what one looks like. Then they glimpse the Romulan bridge:
SPOCK: I have a fix on it, Captain. I believe I can lock on it, get a picture of their Bridge.
KIRK: Put it on the screen.
(Up shimmers an image of a group of four humanoids around a console. One leaves his post and salutes the figure with his back to us. That figure then turns, and we see someone who looks just like - a Vulcan. Both Spock's eyebrows hit the ceiling. There's a long silence and a lot of stares.) KIRK: Decoding?
After that revelation, there is one suggestion about the possible origin of the Romulans:
STILES: We know what they look like.
SPOCK: Yes, indeed we do, Mister Stiles. And if Romulans are an offshoot of my Vulcan blood, and I think this likely, then attack becomes even more imperative.
MCCOY: War is never imperative, Mister Spock.
SPOCK: It is for them, Doctor. Vulcan, like Earth, had its aggressive colonising period. Savage, even by Earth standards. And if Romulans retain this martial philosophy, then weakness is something we dare not show.
.
Spock may have referred to Vulcan's aggressive colonizing period of planet bound expansion like during Earth's Age of Exploration and 19th century colonization. But if the Romulans might be a remnant of a period of aggressive colonization it must have been an aggressive colonizing period of interstellar expansion. [Did Earth ever expand and colonize aggressively in interstellar space in Star Trek long before the Federation?]
But Vulcan's civilization must have fallen sometime after Romulus was colonized. Otherwise when the Romulan War started the Vulcans would have known that the Romulans were the people of their colony number 37 who had revolted 152,246 Vulcan years ago and been fighting occasional wars with Vulcan ever since. There would never have been any mystery about Romulan origins.
The Fall of The Vulcan Space Empire many thousands of years ago caused civilization to fall on Vulcan, Romulus, and every other colony planet of Vulcans - otherwise any planet where Vulcan civilization hadn't fallen would have quickly rebuilt the Vulcan Empire and no doubt the rebuilt Vulcan Space Empire would still rule this part of the galaxy.
So Vulcan, Romulus, and other Vulcan colony planets rebuilt their civilizations independently in the millennia since the fall of the Vulcan star traveling society. And any Vulcan planets that invented any form of faster than light star travel - instead of learning the technology from other cultures - did so independently at different dates. And the only clue to the dates they might have invented warp drive is that it could not have been centuries or millennia before Earth did, or they would have had too much of a head start for Earth ever to become important in interstellar affairs.
McCoy might mention The Fall of the Vulcan Space Empire and the fall of ancient Vulcan civilization in "Conscience of the King":
MCCOY: Negative. Did you know this is the first time in a week I've had time for a drop of the true? Would you care for a drink, Mister Spock?
SPOCK: My father's race was spared the dubious benefits of alcohol.
MCCOY: Now I know why they were conquered. What are you so worried about, anyway? I find Jim generally knows what he's doing.
Since McCoy doesn't mention the date of the alleged conquest, he might be referring to the Fall of the Vulcan Space Empire tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. Why he thought sobriety could be a cause of being conquered is a mystery.
In "The Immunity Syndrome" Spock says:
SPOCK: Vulcan has not been conquered within its collective memory. The memory goes back so far that no Vulcan can conceive of a conqueror. I knew the ship was lost because I sensed it.
I speculate that the collective memory of Vulcan goes back thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of years, but does not go back to the time of the Fall of the Vulcan Space Empire, and the existence and fall of the lost Vulcan interstellar society is known only from archaelology.
In "Journey to Babel" :
SPOCK: Doctor.
MCCOY: I see it, Spock, but that was a Rigelian.
SPOCK: Rigelian physiology is very similar to Vulcan.
MCCOY: Similar is not good enough. It's still experimental.
Maybe the natives of Rigel V are merely similar to Vulcans and maybe they are descended from a lost Vulcan colony and have gradually evolved differences from Vulcans in tens or hundreds of thousands of years of isolation from Vulcans.
In "The Paradise Syndrome" Spock studies the writings of the Preservers:
(Spock is playing his lyre.)
MCCOY: I prescribed sleep.
SPOCK: You prescribed rest, Doctor. The symbols on the obelisk are not words. They are musical notes.
MCCOY: Musical notes? You mean it's nothing but a song?
SPOCK: In a way, yes. Other cultures, among them certain Vulcan offshoots, use musical notes as words. The tones correspond roughly to an alphabet.
So Spock knows of two Vulcan offshoot cultures that use musical notes as words, as well as other Vulcan offshoot cultures that done't use musical notes as words. Thus Spock should know of at least three or four Vulcan offshoot cultures, and they may be descended from the time of Vulcan's aggressive interstellar conquest and colonization. Thus Spock may have good reasons to suppose the Romulans descend from a planet colonized during that period.
In "The Enterprise Incident" Kirk asks the Romulan Commander:
KIRK: What earns Spock your special interest?
COMMANDER: He is a Vulcan. Our forebears had the same roots and origins. Something you wouldn't understand, Captain. We can appreciate the Vulcans, our distant brothers. I have heard of Vulcan integrity and personal honour. There's a well-known saying, or is it a myth, that Vulcans are incapable of lying?
Do the Romulans know of their Vulcan ancestry because of historical knowledge passed down the ages since Romulus was settled by Vulcans, or have they learned that the natives of Vulcan are similar to Romulans and then had their spies investigate until they were certain that Romulus must have been founded by Vulcan?
In "The Savage Curtain" the image of Surek mentions Vulcan history:
SURAK: In my time on Vulcan, we also faced these same alternatives. We'd suffered devastating wars which nearly destroyed our planet. Another was about to begin. We were torn. But out of our suffering some of us found the discipline to act. We sent emissaries to our opponents to propose peace. The first were killed, but others followed. Ultimately we achieved peace, which has lasted since then.
This suggests that in the time of Surek Vulcan had many atomic weapons. If so Vulcan might also have had interstellar travel and a space empire. But there is certainly no evidence that Vulcan was more advanced than late 20th century AD Earth in Surek's time.
And for decades those were the only statements about Vulcan and Romulan history. To claim that Vulcan had interstellar travel in the time of Surek and that those who left Vulcan to avoid Surek's philosophy became the ancestors of the Vulcans is illogical and in contradiction of the evidence. As is any suggestion that Vulcan and/or Romulus have had interstellar travel
continuously for centuries or millennia before Earth did. Earth could not be as influential as it is in Star Trek if nearby cultures have had that much of a head start in interstellar travel.
